


Asunder

by DarkIsRising



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gunshot Wounds, M/M, One Shot, Tumblr Prompt, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29687271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkIsRising/pseuds/DarkIsRising
Summary: Prompt:“You don’t want to hurt me, but see how deep the bullet lies? Unaware, I’m tearing you asunder.”Obi-Wan is finally beginning to make headway toward the hostages, blue lightsaber deflecting flashes of red against the dark night sky, when the smuggler throws aside her blaster to grab for the slugthrower hanging by her hip. She shoots and Obi-Wan reacts, slicing at the slug he knows damn well is not going to stop for his blade like the blaster fire had.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 55





	Asunder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tessiete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/gifts).



Obi-Wan is finally beginning to make headway toward the hostages, blue lightsaber deflecting flashes of red against the dark night sky, when the smuggler throws aside her blaster to grab for the slugthrower hanging by her hip. She shoots and Obi-Wan reacts, slicing at the slug he knows damn well is not going to stop for his blade like the blaster fire had. 

He sets his teeth, ready for the pain that he knows is coming, and still it isn't enough to prepare him as molten shrapnel flies into Obi-Wan’s hand, his shoulder, and quite possibly his neck. The only reason he isn’t so sure about the last one is the smuggler manages to get one more round off before she’s dispatched by a blade of green wielded by a steady hand.

Pain—white hot and all-consuming—knocks the breath from Obi-Wan and he is on his back, staring at the pinpricks of stars overhead as his shoulder ignites with agony, when Qui-Gon’s voice calls out to him.

“Knight Kenobi?” he asks, as formal as he’d been since the moment the two had been paired up and packed off for this mission by a Council who should have had enough collective wisdom to leave well enough alone. But, no, five years after the cutting of Obi-Wan’s padawan braid had split the famous Jinn/Kenobi partnership neatly in two, the Council just had to try and force a reconciliation that time and distance hadn’t been powerful enough to mend.

Staring at the stars, not sure which are real and which are manufactured by his pain-addled brain, Obi-Wan tries to decide what hurts worse: being shot by a slug in the middle of this backwater planet or the cool, unfamiliar politeness in a voice that had once only held warm familiarity.

“I’m fine, thank you for your concern, Master Jinn,” Obi-Wan says, pitching his voice to match his former master’s conciliatory tone. Obi-Wan had long ago perfected the art of dissociating his Jedi-trained spirit with his all-too-human body’s limits. Qui-Gon takes him at his word, asking no more questions as he turns his attention to their mission once more.

Obi-Wan finds his way to standing, and then it is nothing but pure, jaw-clenching stubbornness and a steady release of emotion to the Force that powers him through the rest of the night. Together, he and Qui-Gon free the hostages and direct them back toward the safety of the tree line. The darkness is absolute, lit only by the glow of their sabers, and he is glad for the shadows that conceal the dark evidence of blood soaking Obi-Wan’s robe and running down to his wrist. 

Headstrong. That’s what Qui-Gon had called Obi-Wan years ago in the Council chamber when he’d been so eager to swap the padawan that had only ever served as a placeholder for a new one. Capable.

So it is with headstrong capability Obi-Wan keeps his feet underneath himself over fallen branches and through thick brambles until Qui-Gon, who’d taken the lead, finds a place for their caravan to settle for the rest of the night. 

And then, in a darkness so severe he can barely make out the shapes of slumbering beings from the underbrush, Obi-Wan steps away to find a good place to sit down and bleed awhile.

A crack of a branch is the only sign he gets that Qui-Gon is near and he startles with a jerk that pulls on his wound and he sees white.

“Did I scare you?” Qui-Gon asks, surprised, and Obi-Wan can only laugh. 

“I apologize, Master Jinn, I didn’t sense your approach.” Blood loss must be getting to him because he can feel his mouth speak but the words are coming from a distance away. A galaxy and five years away, if he had to make a guess. “I’m afraid my connection to the Living Force has yet to improve, despite my attempts to correct my limitations since I left your tutelage.”

“You’re hurt,” Qui-Gon says, body heat finding Obi-Wan’s in the dark as he drops down to his knees. The shape of him is large, towering over where Obi-Wan slumps against a tree trunk. There’s a stirring in the air as Qui-Gon tests the tendrils of the Force where it curls around Obi-Wan’s body and shivers through his bones. 

“And you are as connected to the Living Force as ever, Master Jinn.” Obi-Wan doesn’t fight against Qui-Gon’s probing as it sweeps him from the crown of his head to the ends of his toes before settling against his shoulder, prickling and alive. His lips buzz faintly and he has as little control over his tongue as he does the rest of him, at the moment. “It’s a shame that thirteen years as your apprentice wasn’t enough for me to attain a better sense of it, but I suppose there’s only so much a teacher can do. Can’t get blood from a stone, as they say.” 

Qui-Gon ignores him, but in the years since their separation Obi-Wan has learned to expect little else from the man that had once been the center from which everything else in Obi-Wan’s world had revolved.

“The slug is still in there,” Qui-Gon says, which is hardly a surprise, though the hand that finds its way to sweep across Obi-Wan’s cheek—just above the beard that he’s been growing since he was knighted—is. 

The touch is there and then gone, almost too fast for Obi-Wan in his current state to register, and before he can ask what it means Qui-Gon is saying: “I’m afraid this is going to hurt,” and then that’s it. The projectile in his shoulder is pried out by an invisible grip and it’s a choice between screaming and passing out.

Before he can decide between the two, unconsciousness takes Obi-Wan and smothers him with an inescapable wrench.

He wakes a moment, or possibly hours, later. Morning mist curls through the green foliage and the sound of a dozen beings breathing in sleep is a lulling murmur. The sky is cobalt where it peeks through the trees and when Obi-Wan turns his head he can see eyes just as blue watching him.

“You were never a placeholder.” Qui-Gon’s voice is rough, raw, as if he’d been holding these words inside of him for so long they’d lodged in deep and begun to roost.

“What?” Obi-Wan asks, dazed. He glances down and can see a makeshift bandage on his shoulder, which makes sense because that’s where the dull throb of pain hurts worst of all.

“You were never a placeholder to me, Obi-Wan.”

“Oh,” he says, confused, and then “Oh,” again, when he realizes what has happened. “My shielding—”

“It slipped, yes.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, feeling a sting of embarrassment. “I should have had better control.”

“You’d been shot,” Qui-Gon’s voice is hard, breathtaking in its fierceness, and it tears through Obi-Wan just as surely as the slug had. “I don’t know what kind of monster you take me for, that I would expect you to maintain your composure as you lay dying—”

“You did.” The words are out before he can stop them and they buttress the air between them. His heart is pounding now. He feels reckless—headstrong, he thinks with a sick lurch—but there’s no stopping now that he’s begun. “You were dying on Naboo and there was nothing I could do to feel you. Nothing I could do to hear—” he swallows, and against reason, Obi-Wan keeps speaking. “I beat against your shields with everything I had and all you could talk about was Anakin and his training.”

“I had to,” Qui-Gon says, gutted. “I had no choice. If you had known what I was thinking, what I was feeling. How I feel about...” he trails off and Obi-Wan has to breathe through his teeth as he forces himself up to sitting. He closes the space between them because he has to, he has no choice, not when Qui-Gon looks like that.

“Tell me,” he whispers, because to speak any louder would be sacrilege, and maybe Qui-Gon feels the same way because he doesn’t say anything.

Instead he drops his shields, and Obi-Wan can see for himself what Qui-Gon has been keeping locked away behind durasteel and ferrocrete, hidden from view and pressed into the lining of a heart that had very nearly been pierced by a red lightsaber five years ago.

“Oh,” Obi-Wan says, because there isn’t anything else he can say. Not when his fingers are brushing across Qui-Gon’s cheek. Not when his hand is grabbing Qui-Gon by the back of his neck. Not when he pulls Qui-Gon down until their lips meet, and the first taste of him rips Obi-Wan apart, tearing him asunder.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Find me on tumblr as DarkIsRising


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